No Zylesea, theMPC 5125 eval board wasn't even close to what I was thinking off, but you've got a point. There are a few low cost evaluation boards, they just don't include the kind of processor I like to use.

OK! jcmarcos! You did mean what I thought you meant. That's cool.
I'll let you in on something that's not really a secret, several of us have repeatedly examined this idea.
Well, not just examined, really more like established contacts with company reps, obtained price quotess, did at least some preliminary design work.
Andreas is more familiar with this than I am. I spent time on inquiries with I BM and Freescale and went so far as to start the design of an MPC8640 based system (with an ATI SB600 Southbridge).
One of the few people I quizzed for feedback was Andreas (which is why I threw the question at him in this thread).
Another MorphOS contributor (who can talk to you himself or Andreas can reference) still has regrets about not following through with an 8610 based design.
I myself still think it might be a good idea (a new PPC motherboard) and I can see two possible sources for the processor (Freescale and Applied Micro), but there are some qualifiers.
Price is the biggest one. I gave up my design when G4 Mac support was announced. An MPC8640 design would have some advantages, but the ultimate clock speed would be lower than the G4s. And how are you going to compete with the price of Macs that are practically being given away? Ultimately, once you crunch the numbers, you realize that the price of the X1000 and Acube's products aren't as overpriced as everyone complains.
Low scale production of custom boards like this is expensive.
The other qualifier (and I'm sure there are more) is performance. While a few PPC processor are now being introduced that again have started pushing performance up, its still hard to beat the performance of the G5 (and again these systems are dirt cheap).

Think carefully about this,. It would be great to have a new system and the new options that would offer us (like PCI-e 2.0), but in practical terms- does it make good economic sense to invest a fairly large amount of money to produce something that will cost several times what an older platform (that would competently perform about as well) would? What is your market? Is it larger enough that you're not going to take a bath (financially)?

Genesi and Acube have pursued other markets than just the MorphOS market when developing new hardware. Can you do that? Are there the resources and time necessary to pull this off?

And its going to be a lot of work. Are you willing to commit that much of your life to this as it will obviously take?
All thoughts that have gone through my mind and still I find the idea tempting.

Anyone elses input on this would be gladly accepted. I don't know what the answer is. It would be nice, but how to do it, where to find the financial resources and how to organize it are all questions that still vex me.

Anyone?

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/12/30 15:28 ]

Quote:

Of course not. I've taken out the rest of your valuable comments, because I've assimilated them easily. In fact, nothing of what you say is a surprise.

In the end, when something doesn't get done, it has to be because of something.

So sure, my comment about "making our own computer" can be reduced to an act of sarcasm.

Final note: This is a cold, ungrateful world...

Final note 2: The Team's idea to use Mac hardware might have been the best idea in amigaland in decades.

>> I don't think jcmarcos referred to designing a new board

> Oh yes I did!

Then it seems I misread your response to my answer to your question if there's already a development board for Applied Micro's Mamba processor :-)

> yet again, how the hell does LimePC do what they do?

What do you mean specifically?

>> we'd end up with something as expensive as the X1000

> Nope, there's chips out there for something cheaper.

This statement was made under the (improper) premise that you were referring to using existing eval boards :-)

> freescale should be giving away eval boards for their products!

At least they're giving the CPUs away for free for evaluation purposes ;-)

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=74509#74509

> Matt said he got his during the period they were 'discounted' to
> the oh so affordable price of $2000

I think it was $1500.

http://www.newsletterarchive.org/2008/07/18/397039-Freescale
http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/158082.shtml

> Remember the last ARM evaluation board I mentioned to you? $200!

It's $174 now:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?keywords=UEVM4430F-01-00-00-ND

Quote:

I'd call your last post a fine exaple of why you were one of the few people I ask advice from. Scary, now that you mention it, it probanly was $1500 (still about 33% higher than it ought to be, but I would have paid that).

You see jcmarcos, here's is THE man on the post with total recall, who has done a lot of research on topics related to our market. And no, I don't think you were being sacastic. I feel that way every time I see a new promising introduction. Then all the economics courses I took in the past kick in, and I reach the same (somewhat depressing solution) - not practical. For now the MOS development has the right idea.

BTW - Andreas, thanks for throwing the Digikey reference back at me, I may have to buy one of those just to play with it (if they're available).

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/12/31 2:37 ]

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/12/31 2:44 ]

> 800ghz coby kyros

Had those specs been written by Max Seybold by chance? ;-)

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6726&forum=11&post_id=77311#77311

looks familiar though can't get over opensuite, which reads all my m$ stuff! c'mon mannn!
with editing...been only b!tching for something similar on morph now for like ever!

> The MPC 5125 eval board is 119 US$

That development board by THTF/LimePC for the Freescale Tower System is not *the* MPC5125 eval board, which is rather the ADS5125 by STx (2000 USD). The same as with the MPC5121e: There's the ADS5121 ("Hellrosa") eval board by STx for 2000 USD (or 500 USD for an older revision) and there's the much cheaper MPC5121e development board by THTF/LimePC for the Freescale Tower System.

> The 86xx ship unfortunately has more or less sailed

Freescale at least say they'll ensure its availability until 2018 ;-)

> established contacts with company reps, obtained price quotess,
> did at least some preliminary design work.
> Andreas is more familiar with this than I am. I spent time on inquiries
> with I BM and Freescale and went so far as to start the design of an
> MPC8640 based system

I don't quite understand. What is it that you think I'm more familiar with than you?

> I can see two possible sources for the processor (Freescale and Applied Micro)

I'd add LSI to that:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=77307#77307

> Acube have pursued other markets than just the MorphOS
> market when developing new hardware.

I'd even go as far as saying that the MorphOS market has never been in ACube's mind ;-)

Quote:

Mass manufacturing and selling (!) of lovely little PowerPC computers. They even make the best (read: non crazy expensive) evaluation boards for freescale! Funnily, that was the space I once though Genesi was in - perhaps that THTF betrayal went much further than I thought...

Quote:

Sorry, haste fequently makes my posts unclear. Of course I only mentioned some of what I'd done. But you were familiar with both the proposed 8610 system and my work.

Plus you're much better than me a remembering timelines and specific details (ie the price Matt paid for his evaluation board).
So, what I meant was for a general overview of the period these ideas were still floating around/under consideration, you might be better at providind a holistically consise summary.

What I have, is a less accurate memory, and a lot of technical print outs, notebooks filled with specific lists of pin functions, equivalents between Uli and ATI Southbridge components, and notes related to a huge variety of specific comsiderations (too long to summarize here).
As well as the beginning entries/files for circuit layout.

In essence, I feel comfotable with the technology, but feel you are a better speaker/writer (even if english is my first language and a secondary one for you) than I am. I value accurate, concise explanations.



[ Edited by Jim on 2010/12/31 11:47 ]

Quote:

LSI, maybe, depending on performance. And, yes, when I reread the paragraph mentioning Genesi and Acube I should have refered to not focusimg soley on "MorrphOS or AOS4" not just MorphOS.

I thought about re-editting it for clarity, but I spend too much time making such correctiions already (I figured that eveyone would understand what I meant about not focusing on one market)..

Thanks again for the input last night (which losely calculated would have beeen your morning). And, if I'm not mistaken you'll be receiving this fairly late on New Years Eve, so go have a beer (its traditional and its my birthday).
Take care oh precise one.

>>> yet again, how the hell does LimePC do what they do?

>> What do you mean specifically?

> Mass manufacturing and selling (!) of lovely little PowerPC computers.

Okay. Maybe the question shouldn't be "how" but rather "why"? ;-)
Non-jokingly: The MPC512x is a very low-cost chip so I think whether to offer evaluation or development boards or systems based on this chip either for much or for little money is just a policy decision of the manufacturing company. THTF/LimePC obviously want to go for the cheap route and so they just do it. No magic involved. STx however seem to pursue quite another policy with their MPC512x based evaluation and reference boards and systems.

> Funnily, that was the space I once though Genesi was in

Yes, definitely:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6096&forum=11&post_id=60431#60431

> LSI, maybe, depending on performance.

We may be in for a surprise:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=79013#79013

> I figured that eveyone would understand what I meant about
> not focusing on one market

I did, that's why it was meant to be a jesting comment :-)

> if I'm not mistaken you'll be receiving this fairly late on New Years Eve

Actually, it was about noon :-)

> its my birthday

Happy birthday, mate. Go have plenty of beers ;-)

>> What is it that you think I'm more familiar with than you?

> you were familiar with both the proposed 8610 system and my work. [...]
> what I meant was for a general overview of the period these ideas were
> still floatingaround/under consideration, you might be better at providind
> a holistically consise summary.

Ah, I see. Thanks for clarification.

Update:

> They still have 2.5 weeks left ;-)

Unfortunately, no announcement of specific AltiVec enabled QorIQ chips in 2010 :-/

Just discovered my posts about Titan were mentioned in this thread, and nobody knew what I was on about. I didn't give the whole story so I'll explain:

I attended a talk by Intrinsity at work where they talked about their technology and their involvement in Titan.

The idea behind Titan was to use the Intrinsity Fast14 technology on a cheap PPC. By using Fast14 they could make the chip fast and low power but they could also save money by using a 90nm process.

But, Titan wasn't an existing core with Fast14 added to it. It was a completely new core designed by Intrinsity under contract from AMCC.

When Apple bought Intrinsity I suspect Apple wanted the engineers to work on their projects and pretty much paid AMCC to drop Titan.

However since AMCC owned the design they could still port it to a different process, presumably without the Fast14 tech.

Titan was a specific implementation of the core, it got cancelled, and AMCC started work on a new implementation on IIRC 45nm.

So that why Titan was the core that was cancelled, but wasn't.

--

BTW The Fast14 tech is very impressive, it can pretty much double performance without increasing power consumption. Before they were bought, there were rumours of Intrinsity working on a 2Ghz Cortex-A9.

I suspect the iPad 2 might be rather more potent than anyone suspects

It's a pity Apple scarfed up the technology.
I had some suspicion that Apple's purchase of Intrinsity was behind the shift away from Titan.

Have you got any idea how close the new 45nm processor is to the Titan design?

[ Edited by Jim on 2011/1/19 22:44 ]

> Titan wasn't an existing core with Fast14 added to it. It was a completely
> new core designed by Intrinsity under contract from AMCC.

But why is it then that Titan is often connected to the PPC4xx family of cores?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6268&forum=11&post_id=76580#76580
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6268&forum=11&post_id=79905#79905

Is it maybe just that Titan was designed to be compatible with the existing PPC4xx cores in supervisor mode, rendering it a new member of the PPC4xx core family technically? And then there's the clue that Titan was announced to deliver 2.0 DMIPS/MHz, just like PPC440 and PPC460 (and presumably PPC450) do.

> When Apple bought Intrinsity I suspect Apple [...] pretty much paid AMCC to drop Titan.

Yes, Applied Micro said that in April 2010 they had got their 5.4 million USD investment refunded by Apple. See last quote there:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=77002#77002

> since AMCC owned the design

As they got their investment refunded I would conclude that they don't own the design anymore. Any objections?

> they could still port it to a different process, presumably without the Fast14 tech.
> Titan was a specific implementation of the core, it got cancelled, and AMCC
> started work on a new implementation on IIRC 45nm. So that why Titan was
> the core that was cancelled, but wasn't.

So you think the 40nm PPC465 core based PacketPro/Mamba/APM86xxx is just a quick interim solution on the way to a processor based on a 40nm (not 45) implementation of the Intrinsity developed core? Admittedly, Applied Micro claimed in July 2009 that the Titan core could easily be migrated to smaller process nodes like 40nm. See last quote there:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=77005#77005

But then, this was before Apple had refunded Applied Micro's Intrinsity investment, and even before Apple had acquired Intrinsity.

> Before they were bought, there were rumours of Intrinsity
> working on a 2Ghz Cortex-A9.

Samsung's Hummingbird core used for instance in Apple's A4 chip is an Intrinsity (i.e. Fast14) enhanced Cortex-A8 core. And while there're already 2 GHz Cortex-A9 based chips in existence (e.g. by Nufront) I guess that a Fast14 enhanced 2 GHz Cortex-A9 would draw even less power.

Quote:

Indeed! Sparked by what you've said, I immediately found a document about it, and it's a fascinating read.

Andreas_Wolf wrote:

Quote:

Maybe it's designed to be compatible.

OTOH it could just be marketing. AMCC have the 460 label on different chips with 440 cores and others with 460 cores...

Quote:

I don't know the details so I wouldn't conclude anything.

I would imagine they own the core but not the 90nm version. Certainly $5.6 million isn't nearly enough to design a core.

The deal would have been much bigger and probably very complex so $5.6 million might have been a part payment for something they didn't get.


Quote:

Indeed.

> Maybe it's designed to be compatible.

Okay, that would be what I told I suspected regarding supervisor mode compatibility.

> OTOH it could just be marketing.

I doubt that, else debugging tools developers Abatron and Lauterbach wouldn't list it under PPC4xx I think.

> AMCC have the 460 label on different chips with 440 cores
> and others with 460 cores...

I'm aware of that. But still, subsuming any core/chip under 'PPC4xx' is yet another quality than just calling a PPC440 core based chip a 'PPC460'.

> Certainly $5.6 million isn't nearly enough to design a core.

So I guess 5.4 million wouldn't suffice all the more ;-) Thanks for the insight as I'm really not aware of how much money is usually involved in such undertakings.

Quote:

I'm surprised at this. I thought designing a CPU core, based on existing ARM technology, wasn't that complex. Due all respect, of course.

Or perhaps it's my misunderstanding, as it's not like ARM gives you some schematics, and then you tweak and build around them. Perhaps what ARM gives you is the instruction set and nothing else, and that's not at all like having the plans for a building.

Also, ARM might ask you for several million already in order to get a license for their ISA.

So, what does it take to make a CPU? Being it ARM makes it any easier? x86 maybe is? As I understand it would be a very lengthy explanation, pehaps there's something worth reading there that you could point me at.

By the way, congratulations Andreas: I've never seen a member here with such a "Yokemate of Keyboards" award! Are you the most posting user here? It wouldn't surprise me - and I'd say 90% of your posts are useful, that would count double than this post from mine.

Andreas and I have been discussing Freescale's reference designs for the P2020. Prompted by my complaint that you couldn't get he first board (it was already discontinued) and it's replacement wasn't available, our incredibly resourceful Wolfbot dug up this.

http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/brochure/PWRARCHQIQSG.pdf

The line you want to look at is under Reference Platforms where it mentions
"P2020/P2010 P2020RDPC $595 QorIQ P2020/P2010 Reference Design Board"

If you look this up on Freescake's website you'll find the P2020DS-PA Development System.

http://cache.freescale.com/files/netcomm/doc/fact_sheet/P2020DS.pdf?fsrch=1&sr=1

It comes complete with a hard drive with Linux loaded on it and appears to be a larger, better expanded version of the older boards.

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=P2010RDB&fsrch=1&sr=1

The processor (a P2020) is a dual core E5500 derivative running at 800 to 1200Mhz. The boars has two PCIe slots, another slot referred to as an SGMI riser card slot (apparently related to networking), and what appears to be a PCI slot (which isn't mentioned in the documentation).
The board has the usual sound and USB ports and three 10/100/1000 Ethernet connectors as well as a connector for NAND Flash memory.
The board has one slot for DDR3 memory.

So $595, listed as for purchase with expected delivery in mid-April. This looks more powerful than the SAM460EX. While the P2020 lacks AltiVec instructions its E5500 cores should be more powerful than the SAM460EX (and its cheaper than any board from Acube).

I should have let Andreas post this for you guys, but after thinking about it overnight, I decided to go ahead (since he's sure to post corrections to any errors I've made and his observations).

So, what do you think?


[ Edited by Jim on 2011/1/21 12:15 ]

[ Edited by Jim on 2011/1/21 13:13 ]

> I thought designing a CPU core, based on existing ARM technology,
> wasn't that complex.

Titan uses Power ISA, not ARM ISA. As for the scale of costs, I think it depends on whether it's about a new core from scratch or about the enhancement of a pre-existing core. In case of Titan minator says it's a new core from scratch, thus more costly to develop, while in case of the Hummingbird core Intrinsity enhanced the pre-existing ARM Cortex-A8 core with their Fast14 technology, thus less costly to develop.

> Or perhaps it's my misunderstanding, as it's not like ARM gives you some
> schematics, and then you tweak and build around them. Perhaps what ARM
> gives you is the instruction set and nothing else, and that's not at all like having
> the plans for a building.

I already tried to explain the difference between an ISA license (here: Titan according to minator, albeit Power instead of ARM) and a core license (here: Hummingbird) to you, using the example of Marvell (seems I didn't succeed, unfortunately):

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6726&forum=11&post_id=78281#78281

So for developing Titan Intrinsity allegedly had only the Power "instruction set and nothing else", while for Hummingbird they had access to "the plans for a building".

> ARM might ask you for several million already in order to get
> a license for their ISA.

While that might be true (not only regarding ARM Ltd., but IBM as well) it doesn't apply here. Intrinsity developed Titan for Applied Micro, who have already had a Power ISA license (as well as a PPC4xx core license) from IBM, and they developed Hummingbird for Samsung, who have already had a Cortex-A8 core license from ARM Ltd. So no additional 3rd party licensing costs were involved in either case.

> congratulations Andreas: I've never seen a member here with such a
> "Yokemate of Keyboards" award!

Thanks. I think I got it by passing 2000 postings.

> Are you the most posting user here?

Second most actually, with Targhan being first and magnetic being third. But that's really not important to me as I don't post with the intention to raise my posting count. You're #9 btw ;-) You can see current stats there on the left:

https://morph.zone/modules/lastposts/